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Michael Moore: Tomorrow
Tomorrow, the bankers and corporate chiefs are planning an historic victory party. With the election of Mitt Romney, their takeover of American democracy would be complete.
They thought they had accomplished that four years ago when they backed Barack Obama (he received more money from Wall Street than McCain; Goldman Sachs was his No. 1 private contributor). And even though he never put a single one of them of any consequence in jail and never signed any bill that would truly stop their out-of-control greed; and even though he placed two of Wall Street’s favorite operatives — Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers — in charge of the Treasury and economic policy; and even though he let them use bailout money — our money — to give themselves lavish bonuses after they wrecked our economy; and even though he didn’t go for a single-payer health care system and made sure that under “Obamacare” no insurance company would be fined more than $100 a day for denying a person with a pre-existing condition (thus removing many of the teeth the new law had); and even though he let them keep their Bush tax cut for another four years — yes, even after doing all of that for the wealthiest 1 percent, it still wasn’t enough for them, so they decided to turn on him in a vicious way. They decided that they could literally buy an election and toss him to the curb. Why? Because he enacted a little “reform.” Because he wants them to pay just a tiny bit more in taxes. Because, deep down, they know what we know deep down — that Barack Obama, if given a second term, is going to put the brakes on them. They know that Barack Obama will appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Citizens United. And they know that next time they crash our economy, some of them will, hopefully, be going to jail.
And they believe they can stop him tomorrow by having bamboozled enough of those “47 percent,” those moochers, to vote for one of their own — Mitt Romney. A man who, like them, believes big business should have no restraints. A man who pays next to nothing in taxes. A man who has destroyed the livings of thousands of working Americans. A man who hides his money in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands and won’t show us what’s on his tax returns for the past decade.
This is who they want elected president tomorrow — and if this happens, their goal of complete corporate control of the three branches of government will be complete.
Trust me, if they succeed, we may never get it back.
There were two things in the news these past couple of weeks that unfortunately got little attention. But these two stories say it all about the America we will have unless these people are stopped.
One was a story in The Nation that exposed how Romney, while publicly opposing the auto company bailout, secretly got in on the action with his Wall Street donors — and made more than $15 million, a 4,000 percent return on his investment (which he hid in a blind trust in his wife’s name) by buying up the Delphi auto parts company, the former Delco/AC Spark Plug division of GM where my dad worked. He then — get this — grabbed billions in bailout cash to “transform” it from bankrupt to a “viable business.” Except what he really did was slash retiree pensions, shut down 24 U.S. factories, and ship all 25,200 union jobs to China. You’d think he’d keep quiet about Delphi — but no, he’s got his supporters running ads in Ohio blaming Barack Obama for terminating the Delphi pensions. I kid you not. (When I opposed the Iraq War, Romneyites and the like called me a “traitor”; when Romney does this traitorous act destroying jobs and sending them to China, his reward, in addition to the millions he pocketed, may be the presidency tomorrow.) The other story was a bill passed by the Pennsylvania legislature that would allow businesses to take the state income taxes they withhold from their employees’ paychecks and keep the money for themselves! That’s right. Your taxes that you pay to the state won’t go to the state anymore — they’ll just go right into the pockets of your bosses. I was stunned to find out that other states are already doing this as an “incentive” to lure or keep businesses in their states. Let’s be clear what this is about: the final merging that’s taking place between the corporate and political power structures, coming together as one, and making the workers (serfs) pay tribute to their employer (the overlord). Welcome to the New Feudalism.
So tomorrow it’s High Noon in the USA, a literal showdown on the Main Streets of America between the rich and everyone else. The 1 percenters truly believe they can defeat the 99 percent. As the conservative commentator Stephen Moore (who sits on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal) said, “Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy. I’m not even a big believer in democracy.” Citigroup, in an internal memo, said that the only thing that stands in the way of the plutocrats is, well, elections: “[T]he rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash… Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement remains as was – one person, one vote…[W]e are keeping a close eye on developments.”
We have the chance tomorrow to defeat them. They’re counting on us not even showing up. The line in the sand has been drawn. Please do whatever you can today and tomorrow to get everyone you know to the polls — especially any relatives or friends in swing states. Even if you don’t live in a swing state, you need to make a loud statement that you won’t let this happen. And you need to take the House away from the Republicans so some work in Washington can get done.
To volunteer to walk precincts and get out the vote near where you live, go here. Or make calls to swing state voters. And don’t forget that I need each of you to convince just one nonvoter to vote tomorrow so that we can deliver the million-vote margin that could make all the difference.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Now go act as if your democracy depended on it – because it does.Michael Moore: Tomorrow.
A US ELECTION 2012 -A View from France 24
Is ‘Mr Business’ Romney losing his grip?
With the US election just days away, both Republican candidate Mitt Romney and incumbent Barack Obama are hustling for an edge in the race. Yet in recent weeks, the president has been boosted by those traditionally considered Romney allies.
In what has turned into a razor-close race, US President Barack Obama has relied heavily on endorsements from all the usual suspects – liberal-minded movie stars, musicians and writers, as well as the who’s who of the Democratic party. In the past couple of weeks, however, it looks as though the president has also enjoyed a slight boost in support from a less-likely milieu – figures from the political right and finance.
London-based newspaper The Economist stepped forward in support of Obama in its November 3 issue, albeit in a rather reluctant tone. Although the publication, which also endorsed Obama during his 2008 bid, called the president’s first term “patchy”, it justified its decision by comparing the two candidates’ track records. While an endorsement from an international newspaper may not seem like a big deal at first, the fact that it is a highly-respected business publication matters.
Since campaigning began, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has striven to portray Obama’s handling of the country’s struggling economy as ineffectual and horribly mismanaged. The Economist pleads a different case, applauding the president’s wherewithal for having “helped avert a Depression”, and thereby undermining a pillar of Romney’s campaign. What’s more, the newspaper gashes the Republican candidate’s own approach to the economy, calling him “the great flipflopper” and saying his macroeconomics are off the mark. Regardless, a reported 60 percent of the $1.8 billion in business-related contributions thus far in the election have gone to Republicans.
Just two days before The Economist’s tepid endorsement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepped into the presidential campaign after publishing a soberly worded statement endorsing Obama’s re-election bid on Thursday. A registered Independent, Bloomberg cited climate change as his principle reason for throwing his weight behind Obama.
While Bloomberg’s position on issues like gay marriage, abortion and gun control make it unlikely that he will sway voters in more conservative states, his status as a shrewd businessman and multi-billionaire may come as a check to Romney, who has attempted to tout his own business experience as a strength when it comes to tackling the country’s economy. Bloomberg’s endorsement carries all the more weight considering that the mayor, who Forbes rated as the 17th most powerful person in the world in 2011, declined to take sides during the last presidential election in 2008.
Most surprisingly, however, is New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie. Known for his free-flying opinions and fierce criticism of the president, the governor has had only good things to say about Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Christie, who has already endorsed Romney and was a speaker at the Republican National Convention, rattled other members of his party after stating that he “doesn’t give a damn about Election Day” and gushing that Obama deserved “great credit” for his deft response to the “superstorm”.
Christie’s compliments came a little more than a week after another prominent Republican and George W. Bush’s former secretary of state, Colin Powell, also endorsed the president’s re-election bid in an interview with CBS television. While Powell’s support came as no real surprise (he backed the Obama/Biden ticket in 2008), he did offer some searing commentary of Romney, saying that although he respected the Republican candidate, he had concerns over his stance on foreign policy.
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“The governor… was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier. I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy,” Powell said in the October 25 interview.
With polls putting the race at neck and neck just days before the vote on November 6, both candidates are scrambling to fine tune their messages and rustle up support in swing states. As Obama and Romney kick their campaigns into overdrive, anything from The Economist’s unenthusiastic endorsement to Christie’s recent adulation could give the president a slight edge in his re-election bid – an advantage neither candidate can afford to ignore at this late stage in the game.
via Is ‘Mr Business’ Romney losing his grip? – US ELECTION 2012 – FRANCE 24.
via Is ‘Mr Business’ Romney losing his grip? – US ELECTION 2012 – FRANCE 24.
US election:A view from the UK
One of the less convincing critiques of the US presidential election campaign, which winds up on Tuesday, is that there has not been much to choose between the incumbent, President Obama, and his challenger, Mitt Romney.
The reality is very different. Instead, a stark choice exists. One can only judge a candidate on his past record and on what he has pledged to do in the future. Romney has said and done a lot of things, many contradictory, some deliberately so. It has been very hard to know during the campaign which Romney is real: the man who backed the precursor of Obamacare when he was governor or the candidate who suggested to donors that almost half of Americans were welfare beneficiaries beyond his political reach? Is he the centrist Republican of the first presidential debate or the man who insisted during the primaries he was “severely conservative”?
Doubts about Romney have accrued not only from his ever shifting politics but also from a wider sense of flakiness. His economic policies have a touch of the fantastic. Romney would enact large tax cuts, reducing revenue, while increasing defence spending sharply, but also arguing he would eat into the deficit by spending cuts alone.
On foreign policy too, Romney represents a return to the disastrous years of George W Bush – threatening confrontation with China by saying he would list it as a currency manipulator, while making bellicose noises about conflict with Iran.
On the other side of the balance sheet, what is there to say about Obama? Few would disagree that America’s first black president, who was once able to inspire with his oratory, has lost some of his lustre. The messages of hope and change ran aground in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, exacerbated both by the parlous state of the economy he inherited from his predecessor and by the two huge costly wars he was obliged to fight.
If he has not transformed America in the way that many might have hoped, he has at least mitigated some of the pain while moving to bring to an end one of the US’s greatest iniquities, its shocking inequality in affordable healthcare provision. Through the car manufacturers’ bailout, his insistence on stress testing of banks and through carefully targeted stimuli, he ensured that the US now appears to be emerging from financial crisis with modest growth and a rise in employment figures even as those European governments that pursued a strategy of austerity are at very best bumping along the bottom. Obama steered a course between the left of his own party, who were advocating for populist but risky measures, and Republican obstructionism.
On foreign policy, the Obama doctrine has been a mixed bag. He strictly limited US involvement in the most significant military adventure launched under his watch, in Libya, and has resisted Israeli pressure for military strikes against Iran. On the Arab Spring, he has preferred by and large to keep a watching brief and avoided an overt entanglement in Syria. After the war in Iraq, launched on a false pretence, and the mishandling of Afghanistan by Bush, this caution should be seen as positive.
But while Obama may have brought an end to some of the human rights abuses of the Bush era, he has failed either to close Guantánamo Bay, as he promised, or moved to end the immunity of Bush-era officials implicated in abuses.
On climate change too, Obama has been disappointing, not least on the campaign trail. In 2008, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, he insisted: “No single issue sits at the crossroads of as many currents as energy. This is a security threat, an economic albatross and a moral challenge of our time.”
Whoever is elected will face a new presidential term marked by considerable challenges. While the US is recovering from recession it remains weak and would be vulnerable to a number of factors, including a war in the Gulf over Iran disrupting oil supplies, China falling into recession itself or a further worsening of the eurozone crisis.
He will also have to engage quickly with the “fiscal cliff”, due at the year’s end, when temporary payroll tax cuts are due to come to an end, which promises a tough choice between sharp tax increases for ordinary Americans that would threaten the recovery (but cut the deficit) or an extension of the tax cuts and a consequent increase in the deficit, an issue fraught with political strife.
On the wider stage, the war in Syria is sucking in its neighbours, producing growing instability and, for all Obama’s alleged commitment to negotiated solutions, he appears unable to engage Assad’s main backer, Russia. The proposed draw down of the majority of US troops in Afghanistan by 2014 and the continuing tensions in Pakistan threaten another crisis.
Despite all of these caveats, the candidate best equipped for the challenging period ahead is Barack Obama. While his campaign has hardly been inspiring, he remains a thoughtful figure who has taken his responsibilities with a seriousness absent from the Bush years. He has brought a new dignity to the White House and while there remain many who are still opposed to him simply for the colour of his skin, for many others he has achieved the remarkable by making it seem unremarkable that the president of the United States is a black man.
His response to hurricane Sandy, praised by both the independent mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, and the Republican New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, was a belated reminder that there is a wider middle ground in US politics than the recent period of partisan disputes has often led us to believe.
In the coming months, it will not be solely the new president’s responsibility to confront the challenges facing the US and the world but all of those involved in the US political process. Any chance for healing and consensus after the elections should be grasped by all sides. This election offers an opportunity for a fresh start for US politics itself. It should not be squander
Time to vote in the Presidential Election, despite all the negativity around
The presidential election on November 6 brings to an end the most expensive and hotly contested race of modern times.
By the end of the campaign both tickets will have spent $2 billion in total trying to win the White House.
There are those who would argue that it is a colossal waste of money, that elections should be federally funded as they are in Europe in many cases, and that a level playing field should prevail.
Whatever the merits of that, it is clear it will not happen any time soon given the deep pockets of major players on both sides who are doing their best to help influence the election.
Likewise the dissatisfaction with the Electoral College, which can trump the popular vote, is something that has been evidenced since the Bush/Gore race in 2000.
Perhaps if Obama wins in similar fashion both parties will finally have reason to change a system that is not democratic in the true sense of the word.
It is ridiculous that vast areas of this country are not even considered worthy of visits from the contenders, so narrow and narrowing even further are the key states.
Then there is the length of the campaign, which seems to have gone on for two years at least since the first Republican contenders began to limber up to take on the president.
In another way, however, the sheer length is a good thing, helping to quickly unmask the pretenders and allow the most committed and hard-driving candidate to get to the top of the ticket.
Of course the ultimate aim is to get the American people to vote for their favorite contender.
Despite all the negativity, the numbers voting in recent years have been on the increase as the polarization of the electorate has led to more inflamed passion.
This year is likely to be a nail-biter again and will surely rest on a handful of votes across several different states.
It is still a remarkable moment when the greatest democracy in the world passes on power so unremarkably and so free of threats and bluster.
Whoever is elected will take over a country badly in need of strong direction and commitment, and an electorate grown weary of the finger pointing and lack of progress in sorting out the economic mess made after the Great Recession.
We wish the victor well.
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Election 2012 – A Personal View
Are you getting ready to cast your vote?
Consider the following.
No candidate appears to be addressing the real issues namely the Financial Institutions and Jobs.
At the end of the day health care, immigration, and storms are only side issues.
The two real topics that should be screaming forth from the headline news should be unemployment and control over the financial Institutions.
Have the media failed the people concerning these issues. If so, is this due to the malignant lure of campaign funds to fill the publishers coffers.
Do you know the wise guys of banking have received more money in bailouts than has been spent on the wars in Iraq and Iran? All presidents are complicit in doling money your money into these wealth-sucking leeches.
Your next president will be no different he will feed the parasites.
The lesson learned from all of this is the President no longer represents the people. His sole duty appears to be to protect the wealth vampires and the military/industrial complex, the soldiers of destruction. Poor old Johnny Taxpayer must put his hand in the pocket for all the fraud committed by these smart-ass thugs. It seems to me not just in America, but everywhere the dissonant echoes of this story connect with the corridors of authority worldwide.
The most depressing think about this election is you cannot even pick the lesser of two evils
No Catholic should follow Ayn Rand
Paul Ryan (pictured), Mitt Romney‘s running mate in the US presidential election, has stated that he learned from Ayn Rand to view all policy questions as a ‘fight of individualism versus collectivism’. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP
The Catholic condemnation of abortion and the death penalty is well known and understood. But Catholic doctrine also condemns unfettered capitalism. We offer here a list of principles of Catholic social doctrine – not to argue their priority over others – but because we judge these to be the most in danger of being ignored or distorted in contemporary public debate.
The Catholic view of the human person is social not individual. Congressman Paul Ryan has stated that he learned from Ayn Rand to view all policy questions as a “fight of individualism versus collectivism”. The Catholic church does not espouse “individualism” but rather sees it as an error as destructive as collectivism. Blessed John Paul II described “individualism” as a dimension of the “culture of death” arising from an “eclipse of the sense of God”. The human person is “by its innermost nature, a social being”. We are radically dependent upon and responsible for one another. Again, in the words of John Paul II: “We are all really responsible for all.” This truth of the human person is tied to the central doctrines of the church. It reflects the very “intimate life of God, one God in three persons”.
Government has an essential role to play in protecting and promoting the common good. The error of individualism leads to a mistaken understanding of the role of government. For too long politicians have echoed Ronald Reagan’s misleading mantra “government is the problem”. The Catholic church, on the contrary, because of its social understanding of the human person, considers government to be as “necessary” for human nature as the family. The state exists to “defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies”. Thus, while the church does not offer a specific blueprint for policy, it does view our government’s action on behalf of the common good a positive good in itself.
via No Catholic should follow Ayn Rand | Vincent Miller | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
via No Catholic should follow Ayn Rand | Vincent Miller | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
The craziest, most nail-biting elections in U.S. history
In case you haven’t been paying attention: The presidential election is shaping up to be very, very, very close. The scenarios are mind-boggling. One possibility: Mitt Romney could win the popular vote but lose what counts: the electoral college. It would be fitting revenge for Democrats still angry about the Bush-Gore debacle from 2000. The opposite could also occur: Obama, popular in voter-rich California, New York, and Illinois, could win the most votes but be edged out in the electoral college.
Perhaps the craziest of all is the possibility of Romney and Biden winning. You heard that right: a Romney-Biden administration. Imagine, if you will, that Obama and Romney wind up with an electoral college tie of 269-269 (a very slim possibility). It takes 270 to win. So what happens?
The House of Representatives decides. Under Article 12 of the Constitution, each state gets one vote, according to which party dominates that state’s House delegation. There are more Democrats in California’s House delegation, and more Republicans in Texas’, for example. And so forth.Since more state delegations in the House are controlled by Republicans, there’s no question who they’d award the presidency to: Mitt Romney.
But the VP would be picked by the Senate. And the Senate is controlled — and is likely to be controlled after election day — by the Democrats. Who would they vote for? You guessed it: Joe Biden.
Bizarre (or hilarious) as that would be, it would hardly be unprecedented. The election of 1800 was equally screwy, and the contests of 1824 and 1876 were also ones for the books. All three make the 2000 mess seem almost like a picnic. Judge for yourself:
1800: Thomas Jefferson vs. Aaron Burr
In the early days of the republic, electors each cast not one, but two electoral votes for president. Adding to the confusion: There was no such thing as “election day” as we know it now. States voted whenever they felt like it over a period running from April to October. It was a long, drawn-out, and often confusing process.
The republic was just 24 years old when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr squared off against President John Adams and Charles Pickney. Yet electors gave both Jefferson and Burr — who were on the same ticket — 73 electoral votes apiece. Adams got 65, and Pickney 64.
So what do you do in the event of a tie? The Constitution said the House of Representatives would decide. Since Jefferson and Burr got the most electoral votes, the former running mates suddenly became rivals. Voting went on for days, with ballot after ballot. Finally, after 36 ballots, the tie was broken: Thomas Jefferson was declared the president-elect. Aaron Burr was declared vice president. But Jefferson, at this point, didn’t trust Burr and gave him nothing to do.
In an unrelated matter, by the way, Burr later shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary, in a duel.
1824: John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson
Jackson (you know him from the $20 bill) crushed John Quincy Adams, the son of our second president, John Adams, in both the popular vote (41 percent to 31 percent) and in the electoral college (99 to 84). Yet Adams won. How could Adams lose both the popular vote and electoral college yet win the White House?
Unfortunately for “Old Hickory,” as Jackson was known, there were two other men on the presidential ballot in 1824: William Crawford of Georgia, who received 41 electoral votes, and Henry Clay of Kentucky, who got 37. Because the four men received a combined 271 electoral votes, Jackson had a plurality but not a majority. He needed 136, but had only 99.
Once again, it was up to the House. Because the 12th Amendment to the Constitution said that only the top three presidential candidates could be considered, Clay was out. He threw his support to Adams, and on Feb. 9, 1825, the House gave Adams 138 electoral votes. John Quincy Adams — loser of both the popular vote and, at first, the electoral college — would become the sixth president of the United States.
Now, a story like this can’t be told without a little dirt. After all, it’s presidential politics. Just before the results of the House election became public, an anonymous letter appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper. Said to be from a member of Congress, it accused Clay of selling his support to Adams if Adams made Clay secretary of State. Jackson and his supporters were outraged over what they called “the corrupt bargain.”
Clay did indeed become secretary of State in the Adams administration.
This is also a cautionary tale. You’ve got to be careful what you wish for. John Quincy Adams hated being president. He called it the “four most miserable years of my life.” One reason: He was hounded at every turn by Jackson and his supporters. In 1828, both would clash again when Adams sought re-election. This time, Jackson got his revenge, crushing Adams in both the popular vote and winning a majority of the electoral college. Adams later spent 17 years in Congress — the only president to do so after leaving the White House.
1876: Samuel Tilden vs. Rutherford Hayes
It happened again: A candidate lost after getting the most popular votes and the most electoral votes on election day.
In addition to snagging 51 percent of the popular vote, New York Gov. Samuel Tilden (D) won 184 electoral votes — one short of winning the White House. His rival, Ohio Gov. Rutherford B. Hayes (R), won just 48 percent of the vote and 165 electoral votes. Here’s the catch: Twenty other electoral votes in several states were disputed and went uncounted. The states: Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon.
In all three southern states, it looked like Tilden won the popular vote. But there were allegations of fraud (ink-smeared ballots and bribery) and voter intimidation. Chaos ensued. In Florida, for example, the Republicans said they won by 922 votes. Democrats say they did — by 94 votes.
Meantime, in Oregon, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Hayes won the state. But when the Democratic governor found out one Republican member of the electoral college was a federal worker (a postmaster) and ineligible to serve, he replaced him with a Democrat. The Republican elector promptly resigned his post office job and said that as a private citizen, he would cast his electoral college vote for Hayes.
All four states submitted two sets of electoral vote counts each to Congress, all with different results. To untangle the mess, Congress set up an electoral commission: five members of the House, five members of the Senate, and five Supreme Court Justices.
By the way, there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution saying this is how an election standoff was to be resolved. After much maneuvering, the commission voted along party lines — 8 to 7 — to award the disputed electoral votes, and the presidency, to Hayes.
But it still wasn’t over. Democrats threatened to filibuster the counting of electoral votes to keep Hayes from winning. In 1877 — just weeks before inauguration day — Democrats gave in, with one big string attached. Republicans must agree, they said, to withdraw all federal troops from the South. This was just a decade after the civil war. The GOP agreed — and thus the Compromise of 1877.
And you thought Bush-Gore was messy…
http://theweek.com/supertopic/election2012/93/2012+Elections
via The craziest, most nail-biting elections in U.S. history – The Week.
via The craziest, most nail-biting elections in U.S. history – The Week.
Mitt Romney Adviser Says Jeep Jobs Added In China Are Jobs Not Added In U.S.
WASHINGTON – When Mitt Romney told a crowd in Ohio last week that he had read a report saying Jeep was “thinking of moving all production to China,” there was at least a potentially defensible explanation.
A Bloomberg story published the previous Monday had stated that Fiat, which owns Chrysler, “plans to return Jeep output to China and may eventually make all of its models in that country.”
A line was added to the Bloomberg story after it was published stating that Mike Manley, chief operating officer of Fiat and Chrysler in Asia, was referring to “adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China.” The Romney campaign told The Huffington Post on Tuesday that the update was after Romney made his remark on Thursday. It’s not clear whether that’s true or not, but what is known is that Chrysler refuted press reports about the Bloomberg story before Romney spoke Thursday evening in Defiance, Ohio.
What has confounded many political observers, and provoked a spirited counteroffensive from the Obama campaign — including their own TV ad — is why the Romney campaign then aired in Ohio a TV commercial that implied the auto bailout had hurt the auto industry and that Chrysler was sending U.S. jobs to China. Chrysler told HuffPost the company has added 11,200 U.S. jobs since going through a managed bankruptcy backed by federal bailout dollars in late 2008 and early 2009. And while Chrysler is going to make Jeeps in China for the Chinese market rather than selling U.S.-built models in China, the company said it is expanding production rather than shifting it, adding shifts and hiring workers in the U.S. at the same time.
via Mitt Romney Adviser Says Jeep Jobs Added In China Are Jobs Not Added In U.S..
via Mitt Romney Adviser Says Jeep Jobs Added In China Are Jobs Not Added In U.S..
Why Barack Obama is likely to win Ohio? It is the improved economy, stupid — Unemployment cut by one third as auto companies hire and so do banks
Which state in the union has featured the following employment developments this month?
Chrysler announced they are adding 1,100 new jobs, J.P. Morgan Chase is looking for hundreds of bankers, and the Cleveland Clinic needs so many new nurses they rented out the Cleveland Browns football stadium for a jobs fair.
Yes, indeed,� it’s Ohio, and the unemployment rate is just seven percent these days, well below the national average and seemingly ready to go even lower as the above statistics make clear.
Ohio was once the rust belt and a byword for decaying infrastructure but now thanks to the auto bailout and an upbeat economic forecast, the populace are set to vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney.
There is precedence for this. Back in 1988, Democrat Michael Dukakis won several farm states like Iowa which he had no right to win after farm states made clear how much they blamed the Reagan administration and Dukakis opponent V.P. George Bush for the farming prices slump.
Similarly, Obama has stayed ahead in Ohio despite every effort by the Romney camp to undermine that lead– it truly is the economy stupid.
“We’re doing great,” says Rich DeVore, 47, president of a United Autoworkers Union local in Perrysburg, on the outskirts of Toledo told Bloomberg News. “You see a lot of great things happening.”
Put simply, unemployment has dropped by one third and Ohio looks like it will continue to support Obama as a result.
It may well put him in the White House.
US Election: Donald Trump offers Barack Obama farcical $5m ‘deal’
Mr Trump’s much-hyped announcement was rumoured to concern anything from the publication of mythical Obama divorce papers to claims that the President dealt cocaine in college.
In fact, Mr Trump’s revelation turned out to be a bizarre “deal” to donate $5 million to charity should Mr Obama agree to release his college and passport records.
Claiming to be acting as “a spokesperson” for the American people, Mr Trump posted a video address on YouTube saying: “President Obama is the least transparent president in the history of this country. There’s never been anything like it.”
He offered Mr Obama “a deal that I do not believe he can refuse and I hope he doesn’t”, vowing to immediately write a cheque to a charity of the President’s choice in return for releasing the records within the next week.
“If he releases these records it will end the question and indeed the anger of many Americans. They’ll know something about their president. Their president will become transparent,” Mr Trump intoned.
Mr Trump, who led the charge in the so-called birther conspiracy and attempted to cast doubt that the president was born in the US, had boasted earlier this week that his revelation was set to possibly change the race for the White House.
He told Fox News: “[I have] something very, very big concerning the president of the United States. It’s going to be very big. I know one-thing – you will cover it in a very big fashion.”
Mr Trump has a dubious record when it comes to allegations about Mr Obama, which has led to some commentators to question why Mitt Romney has failed to distance himself from the mogul.
The White House released Mr Obama’s birth certificatel last year, showing he had been born in Hawaii and not Kenya as some conservatives had relentlessly insisted.
Mr Romney has also faced conspiracy theories of his own with celebrity attorney Gloria Allred requesting what is rumoured to be damaging information about the former governor given in sealed court records concerning the divorce case of his friend Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples.
Mr Trump’s “revelation” came on the same day that the independent Republican superPAC American Crossroads, released a new TV advert starring Clint Eastwood.
In the commercial the Hollywood icon criticises Mr Obama’s economic record and tells listeners that reelecting him for a second term would be a “rerun of the first, and our country just couldn’t survive that.”
via US Election: Donald Trump offers Barack Obama farcical $5m ‘deal’ – Telegraph.
via US Election: Donald Trump offers Barack Obama farcical $5m ‘deal’ – Telegraph.
